Documents transferred to National Archives lay bare how communist groups were targeted in long jungle war

British troops on patrol in Malayan jungle. Documents transferred to Kew show how British officials in Kuala Lumpur interpreted anti-colonial protests as evidence of a planned communist takeover. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

The "elimination of ranking terrorists" was a repeated theme in secret monthly reports on casualty figures circulated by the director of intelligence in British-controlled Malaya during the 1950s.

Long-lost files from the "emergency" period, when insurgents attempted to drive out colonial occupiers, reveal how the protracted jungle war was fought to drive communist groups into submission and deprive them of food and support.

The first tranche of documents belatedly transferred from the Foreign Office depository in Hanslope park, near Milton Keynes, to the National Archives in Kew, show how British officials in Kuala Lumpur interpreted virtually all anti-colonial protests as evidence of a planned communist takeover.

These missing papers could have been among scores of files listed for destruction in the colony's final months.

A compensation claim by relatives and survivors of the killings – described by some as the "British My Lai massacre", after the US troop killings in Vietnam – is due to come to trial in London in May.

Among documents that survived the transfer are reports issued monthly from the director of intelligence in the Federation of Malaya.

"The last month of 1956 brought a total of 41 eliminations of terrorists, which is average for the year," the director, G C Madoc, noted. "During the year, 287 terrorists were killed, 52 were captured and 134 surrendered. The [communist] politburo policy of avoiding contacts and conserving terrorist strength remains in force."

Madoc added: "In spite of the considerable difficulties of creating underground control organisations from the jungle, it is known that the MCP [Malayan Communist party] is striving continuously to implement directives on subversion in town and villages …

"Hence the need to maintain constant watch over the gullible and ambitious opponents [of] the existing regime who are natural and probably unconscious targets for subtle forms of subversion."

Casualty tables written for December 1956 record: "Ranking terrorists eliminated – 8." The phrase "eliminated" is used repeatedly to describe the killing of insurgents. In January the following year, Madoc recorded: "In Selangor a small but important success was achieved when the whole of the Ampang branch, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, was eliminated."

In March 1957, less than six months before the colony's formal independence, a monthly intelligence assessment observed: "By the standards of the last year the number of terrorist eliminations may be considered satisfactory."

Photograph: The National Archives

The killing of Tan Fuk Leong, it was noted in May that year, "by aerial bombardment, may presently ease the situation in North Negri Sembilan [sic]."

The assessment added: "His inspiring leadership of the 3rd Independent Platoon has been a major factor in the preservation of MCP influence in the north of the state. We know from experience that the elimination of senior leaders has little apparent effect on the morale of followers, but the plain fact is that only one deputy platoon commander survives."

Other means of combating communist subversion included banning books from 29 blacklisted publishing houses in Hong Kong, China and Singapore. A branch of the Labour party of Malaysia was censured for staging a concert at which "two objectionable songs were sung in spite of the fact that the police had registered their disapproval".

Another secret file reports on an inquiry into allegations that British troops regularly strip-searched and abused women near the village of Semenyih during a "food denial" operation aimed at preventing rice being smuggled out to communist units in the jungle.

Women complained that they were forced to remove their clothes, which were then thrown some distance away so they had to recover them under the gaze of loitering soldiers. The final report into the allegations is absent from the file.

An insight into how the government in London initially resisted the anti-colonial winds of change is contained in a "secret and personal letter" sent out in March 1953 by Sir Thomas Lloyd, permanent undersecretary at the Colonial Office.

Dispatched to "governors of non-self governing territories", it began: "The growth of anti-colonial activity is a feature of the general world situation with which we have to reckon these days. The dangers for us from it are sufficiently obvious, not least because its use to smooth the way for communist strategy in colonial territories … It may only be a matter of time before members of the Arab/Asian bloc will cause [their] agents to interest themselves to our detriment in the underground political affairs of our territories."

His circular, posted to British governors in Malaya, British Guyana, Fiji, Cyprus, Kenya, Uganda, Jamaica, Trinidad, Northern Rhodesia and other colonial outposts, requested feedback on "the effect of anti-colonialism on the attitude of the politically conscious among indigenous colonial people". It added: "In territories where there is a domiciled European population, [we recognise that] this is far from being the whole story."

In Malaya, a far-seeing official acknowledged that: "The word 'colonial' has acquired a stigma and should be dropped. We should not have a Colonial Office, a secretary of state for colonial affairs, a colonial service and so on. Why not 'Commonwealth protected territories' or some such phrase?"